Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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25.9.14

A tag-team campaign stunt by
state Rep. John
Bel Edwards and Atty. Gen. Buddy
Caldwell might cause some bureaucratic headaches and burn up some taxpayer
dollars, but in the end will make no difference to coming changes for health
care benefits for state employees, retirees, and some school district employees
– and may even hurt their 2015 electoral ambitions.

This week, Caldwell’s office
issued an opinion
stating that changes being made to the benefit packages had to have gone
through the Administrative
Procedure Act, upon the request by Edwards. The changes in most cases
likely would have the overall effect of increasing payments made by clients,
due to changes in deductibles, co-payments, and services covered. Using this
process for this matter has not been done in the past, and no one ever had
complained about it.

The Gov. Bobby
Jindal Administration, with good reason, disputes
the idea that the APA should apply to these kinds of decisions, but a
creative reading of the law possibly could shoehorn in decisions made about services
disbursed to a class of active and former government agents distinct from the
public, especially in the case of the retirees. It’s a reach and if Caldwell
had not wanted it to succeed, there was ample basis on which to reject that
line of reasoning. But by issuing it under his imprimatur, the controversy
could continue that could benefit certain parties politically.

24.9.14

While some
attention has come to the extra burdens to Louisiana that the policy of
Pres. Barack
Obama regarding unaccompanied illegal alien minors has spawned, little has
surfaced about the costs
imposed by the abuse of the asylum system that his administration and its
supporters have encouraged.

Under international
convention to which it is a signatory America must entertain requests for
asylum based upon persecution or fear of persecution on grounds of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political
opinion, either by a foreign government or private entities that the government
too carelessly allows to persecute people on these bases. A procedure must be
followed to ensure the claim is entertained and adjudicated.

The U.S. famously has had very
welcoming standards for such individuals, including a standard known as “credible
fear” that means that upon application – which is as simple as turning up at a
border and announcing a request for asylum – the seeker will be allowed into
the U.S. and is supposed to be under some form of detention until adjudication
to determine whether the “well-founded fear” of persecution test necessary under
the law to grant asylum can be determined. In the past, it was not unusual for
such determinations to be made within weeks of the request being made, with
many seekers housed in detention facilities.

23.9.14

As usual on the judicial side,
there’s a good degree of somnambulism involved. Of the 21 judicial contests on
the ballot across the parish from Supreme Court down to city court, only three
had any competition (almost entirely incumbents skating through unopposed) and
two of the contested ones were open seats. But there’s one potential
barn-burner challenger vs. incumbent, where City Court Judge Sheva Sims drew a
challenge from former prosecutor Terrell Myles, both Democrats.

Sims made headlines last year
with a bizarre freeing, apparently over displeasure at city prosecutors, of
over a dozen defendants all prepared to plead guilty. This provoked, and
perhaps other events (such petitions are confidential) as well, a complaint to
the Louisiana Judiciary Commission, which has the authority to recommend
disciplining judges. While it has yet to forward a recommendation to the
Louisiana Supreme Court, which could impose any penalty, it seems enough
dissension about her short tenure on the bench has spawned a movement to
sanction her through the ballot box.

22.9.14

Maybe they’re feeling the heat,
so look for an effort by the single most sybaritic special interest in
Louisiana to attempt to buttress the hundreds of millions of dollars annually
it lifts from taxpayers prior to the next session of the Legislature.

Through
2012, the state had only gotten back about $120 million, in terms of
additional tax revenues recouped, of the $800 million that had been then paid
out, or just 15 cents on the dollar. That meant that each
direct job created by the program cost the state $36,000, which is hardly
cost effective. In other words, from the start the program has served as
nothing more as a conduit of the people’s money to a handful of individuals –
many of them nonresidents – to pay them to do what they want to do, not for
investing in what was most efficient for the maximal economic development of
Louisiana.

21.9.14

There’s a lot of timing involved
in politics, as illustrated in the decision by backers of creating a municipality
in east and south East Baton Rouge Parish on when to launch a referendum to
determine whether it will be born.

Organizers to found the city, St. George, assert they have
already enough signatures as qualified under law to call such an
election. As there is no time limit to gathering these, except that if the
verification process, that could take as long as a month, finds them short then
they have 60 days
to try to hit the mark of one-quarter of registered voters in the area, there
is discretion as to when to have the election, subject to the parameters of calling special elections.

As the goal is to assume that
around one out of every eight signatures is not valid, the organizers wish to
have at least 20,000 signatures on hand to turn in and start the verification
process. Given their announced
total is about 1,500 short, there’s no opportunity for the election to
occur this year. The next
available opportunity at present appears to be the first Saturday in April,
Apr. 4, which is set aside for local elections. That would mean that, given the
couple of weeks prior to that date the Secretary of State is to have a
certified petition to put on a ballot, signatures would have to be turned in to
the East Baton Rouge Registrar of Voters in the last week of February. To be
very assured that the verification can get done, the end of January might be
the optimal time.

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